A scandalous new book on Disney has dirt by the shovelful, roiling the House of Mouse

At the annual disney shareholders' meeting last week in Minneapolis, Minn., the hefty document that attendees were most eager to get their hands on was not an annual report. It was James B. Stewart's DisneyWar (Simon & Schuster; 572 pages), which chronicles how CEO Michael Eisner--who announced last year that he would step down in 2006--turned their pop-culture institution into a Tragic Kingdom.

Bookstores around Minneapolis' Convention Center reportedly did not have it in stock, which was one scrap of good news for Disney president and COO Robert Iger. A leading candidate to replace Eisner, Iger cannot be helped in his...